Dear People of the World (formerly Dear Americans)

The story is one Afro-American civil activist disappeared somewhere in Missippi 1964 and FBI men searched for them. Then they faced brutality of local people. The film described how uncivilized and scary deep South like Mississippi was.

I remember when I was in America, Afro-American professor of Black Studies criticized the film because the main characters were two good white men saving poor Afro-Americans. In fact, the film was made from white people's perspective.

When we, Japanese hear about Mississippi, first thing to come up is "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" by Mark Twain. But reality is racist conservative deep South. Now things have changed a little bit better, I guess.

America has changed since that time, which was proven by the fact that Obama was elected as President. However, it seemed he dissappointed those who voted for him. His supporters believed Obama can understand pain of the poor people because he shared the same experience. After he was elected, what appears to be was he was after all, American President just like other Presidents, who had different skin color. He had to serve for rich white men who dominate the country's wealth. He had to keep sending troops to the battle fields to save America's pride and military industry.

The consequence is "Occupy Wall Street." Now new type of seggregation emerged in a country of democracy and freedom. The rich and the poor.

Agony goes on as life goes on.

I watched documentary program on America's new movement in relation to 10th anniversary of 911 attack. In New York, there is a big controversy over opening of new Islamic Center located 2 blocks away from Ground Zero. People overlap image of Al Quaida with Islam.

Anti-Islam activist, Pamela Geller was interviewed by a Japanese journalist. She said "It is not a matter of freedom of faith, it is a matter of emotion. Why should we figure them out? It should be defeated."

Sounds scary! After I watched the program on TV, I accessed her blog and emailed her the below question.

"Your response and comments sound like what Nazi people said to Jews.

Aren’t you using the same propaganda as Nazis did? Aren’t you creating another holocaust like Israel is doing on Palestineans?"

Her response as follows,

"The Jews weren't blowing people up, slaughtering thousands in countries across the world, and killing their own if not devout enough.    

Today I joined my new job training. I just witnessed how ordinary people have become Xenophobic these days in Japan.

Maybe it is because Japan has been in big recession and Chinese ship intruded Japanese territorital sea which caused diplomatic turmoil just recently.

In office, one worker talked about what he witnessed on the platform in the station when Chinese person yelled to a police officer. He said "it was like moster attack." Then his colleagues followed that saying "That is very Chinese personality. That is how they deal with us. See how they bumped to Coast Guard Ship."

My trainer said to me "Be careful these days our customers have become like stupid Americans who always want to sue us."

Japanese are islanders so we generally act like this but these days people have become more aggressive than before. I do not like this tendency.  

Directed by Spike Lee. A story of Black soldiers fighting against Nazis in Italy during WW II.

Although the film wasn't well-edited but I could learn so much about WW II history in Europe, especially Italy's position in the war.

I also could learn how Black soldiers are treated in the war. They were never treated equally. Their white superior never trusted his Black comrades. Back home, they were not allowed to dine in the restaurant while enemy German POW were. They were actually treated better in the enemy line, Italy than in their home country.

Their motive of joining the war was not patriotism. They did it to better their people's social status in their home country.

The story portrays the war between Nazis and partisans in Italy. Italians were loyal to Mussolini's Fascist party which was allied with German Nazis but at the same time there was resistant movement like Partisans.

The reason that I get interested in this film is because I recently learned Italy shares the similar issue with our country in relation to the U.S. military base presence. Both of Italy and Japan are defeated nations in the war. In the city of Vicenza, Italy there is expansion plan of the U.S. military base which localies oppose just like Okinawa island in Japan. If you want to know the detail of what is happening in Okinawa, please read these articles.

The below is trailer of recently release documentary film "Standing army." Description of the article is here.

Standing Army documentary (2010) english trailer from enricox7 on Vimeo.